First Draft Created: 06 Jan, 2025 19:00
Last Updated: 06 Jan, 2025 23:23
He gunned the throttle, hearing the bike's engine roar.
Finally.
It had been an exercise in tenacity and major expense, a true labour of love, with the help of one hell of a gearheaded partner, but it'd been worth it, and they'll pulled it off together, make it further than ever before.
"Ready?" He asked her.
"Ready," she smiled back, revving her own bike in response.
Visors slammed down.
They engaged throttles for real now, and were off.
Speeding out the open garage door, bikes eating up the endless-seeming driveway in mere seconds, and then they approached, winding always closer to the hairpin bend in the distance. He couldn't see her now - the helmed blocked that part of his periphery and he was fixated on his focal point ahead - as any biker knows, you keep your eyes focused on the focal point unless you want to crash - but he could hear her laughing and whooping through their bluetooth connection, loud and clear in their helmets.
The tyres ate up the road, devoured the miles before them, as they sped to what they'd coined the leap of destiny.
"Dive!" He yelled and they were over!
Off, over the cliff, in the air, turning down, hurtling downward towards the steep rocks below, approaching faster and closer than any skydiving jump they'd executed before, both in tandem and solo jumps, the rockets between their legs propelling them down, now no longer thrust but gravity accelerating their momentum.
"Ride!" She yelled, and they peeled up, curving sharp upward turns in the sky, mere metres above the highest treetops, they flew, and their modified spine-seats snapped back to absorb the impact on their backs and necks, the whiplash that would else have followed as a vertical fall's speed channeled into a near 90 degree curve and forward thrust once again, over air and forest. The approaching cliff at the far end of the valley roared into view...
"Rise!" he yelled, and now they were UP! Blasting straight upward again in another 90 degree turn, ground... Or rather, sheer mountain, merely a metre beneath their tyres.
And then finally ...
"Up!" She screamed.
They curved up another 90 degrees, and they kept going.
Beyond the clifftop, nothing but air on all sides now, the gravity losing ground to their boosters as they kicked, shifted their modified gears....
Oxygen had kicked in, deployed from tanks in their specially modified suits.
Still, they accelerated...
A sonic boom, barely perceptible outside of the force-fields-like structures that had gradually formed around their vehicles, they accelerated now still onward until...
"Stop," he said softly, and as gravity fell away so did their thrust. They were finally there.
Floating.
In orbit.
Silence.
They waited.
The blue of the ocean sparkled like a saphire in the now-night sky, surrounding them with billions of stars - a dome of brilliance above them and the massive jewel sphere below them a sight no picture could have constructed like the real thing.
No sound, but silence, broken only by the sound of their breathing, audible within their helmets.
"Made it this time," she said, and he could see even from her visored eyes and hear in her voice that she was grinning.
"First flight, now space! The mechanic and the aeronaut do it again!"
He smiled, kicked his engine back onto idle, slightly drifted his bike over to hers, stabilised again beside her to match her own orbital path. She engaged thrusters again, and they finally exchanged a fist-bump, the hard knuckles of their bike gloves cracking together as the auto-stabilizers kept them from drifting apart from the impact.
"Next up, Mars," she said.
"Next year's resolution," he agreed.